Inaugural Phoenix Startup Week hits the Valley Feb 23-27 – video

The time has come for the Valley to celebrate its local startups at Phoenix Startup Week. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton kicks off the inaugural week-long, Valley-wide celebration of startups and entrepreneurship running February 23 to 27.

The five-day extravaganza will consist of 130 events with a multitude of speakers on topics such as design, coding, marketing and how to raise capital. Storybyte CEO Jonathan Cottrell heads up the event in partnership with lead sponsor Chase bank among other corporations and local businesses. This is one of the largest entrepreneurial events Arizona has hosted, Cottrell said. All events are free to the public.

“This is a great opportunity for people who are thinking about starting businesses or are interested in the startup community as a whole,” Cottrell said. “(It’s) a real place to get their feet wet and get involved in the community.”

Jonathan Cottrell

Each day of the week will be centered around specific parts of the Valley starting in Central Phoenix then moving around to Scottsdale and Tempe. Speeches and workshops will take place at Arizona State, CEI Gateway, GoDaddy, Weebly, Axosoft, GPEC conference space and more.

The week is centered around bringing the community together, Cottrell said. He encourages anyone with an idea or who is starting a business to come and get connected with the community.

There are plenty of happy hours across the valley along with the events for fun filled networking this week, so be sure to attend Phoenix’s first Startup Week.